If you want to rank the favorite beverage among drinkers in Japan, then without any argument, tea should be on top of the list. It is public understanding that tea is deeply rooted in the Japanese food culture. The Japanese love for tea has been coming along from the prehistoric times all the way from the Edo era.
Today the likes of green tea in Japan for example in Japan is celebrated. More than this, tea ceremonies are elaborately observed all across Japan in the greatest zest and thrill. Japanese love their tea in a variety of flavors. This could be served as hot tea or even chilled. Of course, it is a very common sighting to see hot tea savored all across Japan. But then you may be wondering why the Japanese seem so engrossed with hot tea.
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The Health Beauty of Hot Tea
It is an uncontested fact that Japanese love hot tea but why this much?
1. Hot tea is very helpful for your vision
Hot tea is richly composited of antioxidants. These antioxidants are great at improving the health of your eyes. There a lot of eye conditions (which would complicate your vision) that Japanese hot tea helps you from. Some of these dangerous eye conditions include glaucoma and even cataracts. You would be amazed at the amount of good a simple hot cup of tea would flourish your eyes with.
2. Greatly cuts down your chances of succumbing to stroke
Stroke is a very devastating condition that takes the fun off living. By the time your brain is significantly denied of oxygen as seen in stroke, a shutdown of your system is almost inevitable. But you would be astounded a habitual sipping of Japanese hot tea would drastically cut down your risk of developing stroke. Research has amazingly pointed out that a regular consumption of this tea (say a minimum of three cups) every day can slash down your susceptibility to stroke by more than 20%. Isn’t this exciting?
This stroke-resistant feature can largely be attributed to the catechins composition in hot tea, especially black and green tea. This chemical compound is astonishingly effective in reducing the effects of stroke on your vascular system significantly cutting down on the chances of rupture of the blood vessels transporting oxygen to your brain.
3. What if you are told hot tea enhances your memory?
A very sound memory is an intellectual asset. It is actually embarrassing when you forget things too easily such that one would introduce himself to you in the morning and yet introduce himself to you in the afternoon. It is very relieving to learn that with a more consistent drinking of hot tea, your memory is significantly sharpened.
Of course, you may be curious how this is possible. Well, tea contains Camellia sinensis which is medically renowned for ramping up your cognitive capacity.
What You Should Be Careful About While Drinking Hot Tea
While we have been learning the baffling effects of Japanese hot tea, the temptation would be swelling to jump on a boiling pot of tea and gulp all in. There are some situations that we should be careful about when drinking hot tea however.
Alcohol and hot tea
It is not safe to habitually combine hot tea with alcohol. This could have damaging effects on your body. It is not totally uncommon to see Japanese tea lovers basking in the communion of hot tea and alcoholic drinks. This increases the risk of a condition termed squamous cell carcinoma of the esophagus potentially resulting in the cancer of the esophagus.
Just as the name points out squamous cells occupy your esophagus. It would shock you to learn that a large bulk of people who suffer esophagus cancer could be guilty at one time of combining hot tea and alcohol.
Smoking and hot tea
Such cancer of the esophagus also arises from the combination of smoking and hot tea. The scalding capacity which is inherent in hot fluids like hot tea in this instance is pumped up when you combine it with smoking or alcohol consumption.
Moreover try to keep the temperature of your hot tea below 65 degrees Celsius. As if it exceeds this, it could hurt your esophagus lining on the long-term especially when smoking and alcohol come into the mix. Therefore having pointed out this area of caution when drinking hot tea, let us ride on enigmatically learning the beauty of Japanese hot tea.
Hot Tea and Your Immune System
We all want elevated levels of natural immunity, we want our body to be significantly sophisticated enough to naturally resist the invasion of disease. Sadly vaccination on its own is not enough to prevent you from contracting an illness. Studies have shown that even despite being vaccinated, your chances of contracting flu are yet very concrete.
Nonetheless, do you know that drinking of hot tea would increase the efficacy of your immune system?
Yes, drinking hot tea consistently increases your natural resistance to a host ailment cutting across flu all the way to cold. From the scientific angle, a cup of such tea contains more than 18g of theanine which is very beneficial to your immune system. More than this composition of theanine, you are assured a notable composition of vital amino acids that your body needs to consolidate its immunity.
Not that you will not fall ill at all in a decade if you continually drink tea but your chances of getting ill are reasonably reduced.
Hot Tea and Protecting You From Cell Damage
Cell damage is a common occurrence in our system and sometimes you are not even responsible for this damaging anomaly. Naturally, your cells are prone to damage as human as you get older. But this could lead to something even more devastating. This is more common with such cell damage inspired by free radicals. You may be wondering at this interval what these free radicals are.
Helpful and yet catastrophic, free radicals are groups of atoms which have unpaired electrons. This free radicals naturally occur from biochemical reactions in your body. They can be helpful for your normal metabolism but when they get excessive or shoot out of control, they can rapidly instigate cell damage through their worrisome chemical reactivity.
The good news is that hot tea contains some lovely natural compounds called flavonoids. These compounds are very effective in the neutralization of these excessive free radicals. This way you don’t have to bother about them anymore. Thus we see that hot tea in this instance protects you from rapid cell damage.
The Comparison of Hot Tea vs Cold Tea
On the ground of antioxidants
When you make hot tea, the steeping process can be really beneficial. This is because the hot water you would be infusing into the loose tea leaves will cause the leaves to wholly unleash their nutritious contents. Therefore these flavonoids, catechins and the other vital compounds we have been talking about come to the best of their capacity when your tea is warm.
Therefore when you drink hot fresh tea from say your kettle, you are gulping in a voluminous amount of helpful antioxidants into your body. When measured against cold tea, you see that when you open your tea to significantly cool down before drinking, these valuable antioxidants would disappear when they react with oxygen.
This is because these compounds being antioxidants are relatively reactive hence very prone to oxidation when exposed to air. And it is actually these antioxidants that do all the magic we have been talking about in our amazing health benefits of tea cutting through improved dental health, heart health, bone health and a long list of others. Therefore you see that you are losing a miserably heavy chunk of nutrients when you take your tea cold as compared to when you drink hot tea.
On the ground of flavor
We all admit to the reality that in most cases, hot tea is more savory than warm tea. When hot, tea presents its wholesome aroma and flavor. It is even natural that your tongue doesn’t enjoy cold flavors as much as it enjoys hot flavors. Looking deeper into this scientifically, we see that the human taste buds are very sensitive to temperature.
This temperature sensitivity kicks into action when you drink something or eat something warm. Therefore your taste buds are more sensitive when the temperature is upped and not cold. It is this sensitivity to hot beverages that enable the quicker and more fluid transmission of electrical signals to your brain which your brain interprets as the taste of the beverage.
So you see that when you take hot foods or beverages, your taste buds can better send the signal to your brain enabling you to better grasp the taste of what you are drinking.
So measuring from this basis of taste bud sensitivity, your taste buds may not be able to raptly send the right and complete signals to your brains when your beverage is cold. Therefore your brain may not completely interpret the taste of the cold tea.
Consequently, you see that why you tend to enjoy more flavors in your hot tea when compared to your cold tea. It is now easy to see why hot tea seem more delicious and sweeter when measured against cold tea.
Where You Can Enjoy Your Hot Tea In Tokyo
Mahorodo Sogetsu
Mahorodo Sogetsu is one famous location in Tokyo in Japan where you can enjoy your hot tea. The Mahorodo Sogetsu is adjacent the famous to Gotokuji Temple (which is also referred to as the cat temple). Even more than their lovely hot tea, the Mahorodo Sogetsu also serves as a Japanese confectionery shop where you can enjoy some lovely seasonal sweets like mame-daifuku.
Higashiya Ginza
This is another amazing place to enjoy hot tea in Tokyo. The Higashiya Ginza is a famous tea salon that combines all the marvel of hot tea, sweets, wagashi and other amazing Japanese dishes like miso soup.
We have emphatically looked at the marvel of Japanese hot tea cutting through the health benefits, comparison with cold tea as well as places where you can have a good treat of Japanese hot tea. Are you already salivating the next sip of hot tea?
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